California is dumping nearly half of all women inmates in state prisons back into society, or at least into "house arrest." The criteria is "Mothers who were convicted of non-serious, non-sexual crimes and have two years or less remaining on their sentences." The inmates are being released, of course, because the courts declared the overcrowding of prisons way out of bounds. (30,000 must get transfered to county jails or released home—some will go to treatment programs or halfway houses.) The bill that helped plan the release of inmates very carefully included the phrase "primary caregiver" of children, so as to be gender-neutral—although, somehow, there are no plans yet to release men. Prepare for thousands of children to be ripped from foster care settings and reunited with their moms, who are unable to leave the house except for school or work. That sounds awesome, having a mom who's always home. (Although I guess if you're an angry teen, you can just run out and your mom can't follow!) But really: see you again soon, courts! I truly look forward to the lawsuit where childless women still in prison sue the hell out of California.

How are American states, the laboratories of democracy, currently handling the issue of firearms? Let's look at two of them. First up, California: READ MORE

Five years ago, according to the editor of the Quincy Valley Post Register, the town went a bit crazy in a near-shoring boom. Microsoft and Yahoo! both were building data centers in town (hey, eastern California is much closer than Utah, America's favorite near-shoring zone (Mormons are so honest and industrious!)) and property values went up and everyone got a little nuts: "We all know what happened. The construction workers eventually left town, the data centers didn’t bring thousands of new people to live in Quincy and we’re still waiting for a movie theater," he writes. "And sadly, I know of several people who were busted when the boom was over." Now Dell and Sabey are building data centers there too. Here we go again! Meanwhile, up the road a piece in Greenville, you can buy a "3200sf, historic building on Main Street" for $99,000. Be right back, I'm off to start over in Plumas County!

Rap music lost one of its most recognizable voices last night, when Long Beach, California singer Nathaniel "Nate Dogg" Hale died after suffering two strokes in recent years. A childhood friend of Snoop Dogg, who first appeared on Dr. Dre's landmark 1992 album, The Chronic, Nate Dogg rose to his own fame alongside Dre's half-brother Warren G with the era-defining 1994 classic "Regulate." Nate's deep, mellifluous voice came to epitomize California gangsta rap's central victory: making tough, menacing, street music sound sweet and soothing to the ear. He was 41. Here are some of his greatest hits. READ MORE

The Orange County Zoo is holding a contest to name a wild bald eagle that has been perching outside the cage of Olivia, a resident female bald eagle. Zookeepers don't know the gender of the visitor, but the visits have been daily, and the two birds have been screeching back and forth to each other. So, with Valentine's Day coming up and all, they'd like to think he's come a courtin'. READ MORE

The eggheads do complain about their annual conference of eggheads put on by the Modern Language Association. So boring, one has been told, so exhausting. It's crass and awful! The annual dread among those who have ascended to the glories of tenure is flavored strongly with guilt, too, because the MLA is also famously thronged with newly-minted Ph.D.s vying for the fewer and fewer tenure-track jobs on offer. Guilt, nerves, pressure, careerism and the sad foundering of humanities scholarship in our times! READ MORE

What happens when a tabloid gets wind of a two-year-old study project that was recently presented at a conference and has nothing else to write about? ("Tunisia" being outside of the tabloid purview, I guess.) This: "Walls of water 10ft high in a month-long mega hurricane: California told to prepare for biblical 'ARkStorm'"! Thanks, Daily Mail! "Told to prepare" is a particularly genius construction. Of course, in its own much quieter way, the Times followed suit. Prepare to die, hippies! But first enjoy this hilarious video.

How can the future have a government-regulated reputation market if you can't express copyright in your online persona(e)? California leads the way starting this brave new year, in which all your accounts are verified: it's now illegal to impersonate people online for nefarious purposes. Specifically: one is a criminal if one "knowingly and without consent credibly impersonates another actual person through or on an Internet Web site or by other electronic means for purposes of harming, intimidating, threatening, or defrauding another person." I think the trick will be in the issue of "harm"? And possibly "defraud"? I mean the good news is that bad things will have a legal foothold: most online impersonation and harassment seems to be part of larger campaign of harassing and/or attacking women. So for purposes of like, harm as in stalking? Good! But harm as in "brand dilution"—that is what will be prosecuted. Of course there is no carve-out for playful, political or non-murderous uses of online impersonation, and so, before this winds up in courts for refinement, it certainly seems like a stepping stone to our future regulated online identities. Just go ahead and trademark yourself now and get it over with—that way you don't have to wait for the law to catch up to your personal brand online.

Who says wealth doesn’t trickle down? As the nation’s redundant masses tremble, Oliver-Twist-style, before the spectacle of a Democratic-run Congress deciding whether merely to reward quarter-millionaires or the full-scale kind with lavish tax cuts, they might do well to consult the sobering tale of billionaire enclosure of central California’s water supply. It’s hard to see just how the nation’s owning classes will produce additional helpings of gruel (or at least low-wage service-sector jobs) if they’re so deeply averse to spreading around something as essential to agriculture, health and sanitation as water. READ MORE